He grinned. “But who’s counting?”

Kali looked at him.

“Why were you waiting up here?” she said.

He stood quietly a moment, then lowered his head to hide his lips from the vertiport’s surveillance cameras.

“It’s Duchess. She called me into her office to talk.”

“About?”

“The Wolf,” he said. “And you.”

Kali stepped closer. “Does she suspect anything?”

“She could, I guess. I don’t know. It’s hard to stay ahead of her.”

They stood there another second or two, barely an inch between them. The breeze whipped the bottom of her coat around her legs.

“We have to leave here,” she said.

“Not yet.”

“But soon. We need to be ready.”

“Like in baseball.”

Kali gave him a questioning look.

“Long waits, sudden bursts of action,” he explained. “You prepare to be quick.”

“Yes. Like that.”

He raised his eyes to hers. “See you tonight. Your turn to spring for dinner.”

Kali was silent for the time it took the sun to slip in and out of a small passing cloud.

“Tonight,” she said, and strode past him to the access door.

It was two o’clock in the morning on Fiery Cross Reef, where Captain Zhou sat at his computer typing out a brief core-encrypted message. He’d been prepared for Wei’s arrival, or the arrival of some other decrepit member of the old guard from Beijing. His game was one of high risks, and the general’s visit underscored the stakes. It changed things. And the thoughts leaping about his mind had kept Zhou awake in his bathrobe since he’d returned from the dome.

Which was not to say he would second-guess himself. He hadn’t acted blindly or impulsively. He had made his calculations, aligned with the right players. The best political chess masters in the world. Zhou believed the possible outcomes were likely in his favor, but the game was still at an early stage. A bold opening move could be wasted without shrewd, decisive follow-throughs. He would have to be fearless and unflinching every step of the way. Nothing would come of timidity and caution.

Zhou imagined Wei and his peers making their reasonable, considered decisions about Xinjiang Province not so many years ago. How safe and secure they must have felt. How comfortable. They did what was asked of them without hesitation. All in the name of stability, as if anything solid could be built on a mountain of a hundred thousand dead. Of the reasonably and safely slaughtered.

Zhou drank from a glass of ice water and moved his cursor to the send button. Well, he thought, the general would not feel so comfortable tonight. Or in coming days and nights. And the same would be true of Wei’s white-haired comrades. They would trip over their own feet while the ground trembled, rocked and finally crumbled beneath them. They would learn—too late—that the world was not as easily controlled as they believed.